1. Field of the Invention
The present invention concerns monitoring systems for monitoring whether or not a person has reached or left one or more selected destinations.
2. Description of Related Art
Examples of such systems are already known and are particularly useful in the expanding field of home caring. In recent years there has been a substantial increase in the number of elderly or incapacitated people who live in their own homes and are reliant on regular visits by carers. The carers can be employed by local authorities or independent organizations.
In either case it is important for management to be able to monitor the staff who carry out the actual visits in order to ensure that the visits are both actually made and also importantly, made at the right time.
Before the arrival of Computer Integrated Telephony (CTI) such monitoring would normally be carried out on the basis of time logs filled in by individual staff. More recently systems have involved a carer calling into a central office and inputting an identifying PIN number. A similar call on departure will identify the period at which the caller was at a particular address as Caller Line Identification (CLI) will supply the time, date and location of the calls.
A disadvantage of such a system is that calls actually have to be completed by being answered at the central office. This causes additional expense and also takes time.
It is known (as described in WO02/45394) to use a computer system that include databases and uses DNIS (Dialled Number Identification Service), which can identify a care worker from the number they have been told to dial on care visits and identify the location of the care worker by using caller line identification to identify the phone line from which they are making the call. By using a database of the telephone numbers supplied to, and names of, the carer workers along with a database of the telephone numbers of lines installed at the homes of clients that are being visited, both the identity and the location of carer can be identified from a single call. Beneficially these calls can be unanswered calls, thereby not requiring PIN number input (incurring zero cost per call).
A problem with systems according to WO02/4394 is that they rely on the use of fixed landline telephones at the home of each person being visited for the care workers location to be identified. Not all homes have a fixed landline. Where there is a fixed telephone, there may be a delay between a care worker entering a home and finding the telephone. Additionally, many people are now used to the speed and convenience of using a mobile telephone. There are numerous benefits of using a personal mobile telephone over a landline telephone belonging to somebody else. For example the location of the mobile telephone will be known and it will be easy to access; contact telephone numbers that are personally used frequently may be stored and easily accessed in a local memory; a local history of calls made by the call worker may be stored in the memory; and the interface may be efficient and familiar.
Time delays between a care worker arriving, leaving or performing an action and it being recorded can be very important. Some agencies will bill per minute or even second so it is important to minimise both inaccuracies in time monitoring and any wasted time.
A concern of the present invention is to provide a simple yet efficient monitoring system, which at least mitigates some or all of the above problems.
An embodiment of the invention provides a monitoring system in which incoming calls remain unanswered (uncompleted) i.e. no PIN numbers are initially required (or expenses incurred), and in which a call is returned automatically to the original caller.